Recalled to Life
by Meenie Mo
Summary: Luke returns, but carries with him not only physical scars, but inner scars as well...L/T, and perhaps L/A. REDONE! Much better this time around.


**AN: Hi everyone. So in case you didn't notice, I took down the first three chapters. They were getting no reviews, and when I went back to read them, I was really frustrated by the fact that they were short, felt choppy and elementary, and they weren't getting reviews. I wasn't really happy with the way they were turning out, and they weren't getting any reviews. Probably the biggest reason I replaced all three with this one chapter was because I wasn't getting any reviews. (Hint hint :REVIEW PLEASE! ) Seriously, I don't know if I'm doing something write if people don't tell me that they like it or hate it. Take three second, hit the review button, and say "Hey, keep writing like that!" or "Hey, change the way you word this!" or "hey include more of these thoughts, or descriptions!" or just "Hey, you're strange!" (just kidding...I already know I'm strange, ok? . )**

**So this chapter is longer, and probably a lot more epic. And it's written in Annabeth's POV. I decided to cut the crap, and get to the real meat and bones of the story. Once again, please review, and tell me if you like this new version, or if the old one was fine on its own! Thanks!**

**Disclaimer: Own nothing, except plot. **

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It was 3am, the dead of the night, and of course, I'd lost track of time again. Daedalus's laptop seemed endless (it probably was), and I was so immersed in it that by the time I looked up from it, everyone around me was already snoring. I rubbed my dry eyes, knowing Percy would give me hell for it tomorrow. Always telling me that I would kill myself before a monster would.

I gazed out the window next to my bed and saw the stars, looking for a young girl with an arrow- and saw it. I sighed, wondering if she had made it to Elysium in the afterlife. Then I shrugged. Perhaps I could ask Nico how she was doing in Hades. There are positive sides to having the Lord of Hades' son as one of your best friends.

The night didn't look too cold- the stars and the moon were bright. _Nothing like a walk at 3am…_

I was probably about to break a bunch of camp curfew rules. If Chiron had a problem with it, then I would kindly remind him how me, Percy, and Grover had literally saved his horsey-behind just a couple of months ago. Karma, karma, karma

I threw on a light wind breaker and stepped outside, breathing in the smells of night life. It was beautiful; moonlight turning the succulent green leaves a silvery color and bathing camp in a dark and mysterious hue. Had I been any sort of artist, I would have drawn it; knowing me, I probably would have ended up drawing the architectural structures of the cabins and trees.

I wandered around, my feet taking me wherever it pleased. I peeked into Poseidon's cabin to find Percy sprawled across his bed, one leg hanging off. _Classic._

I absentmindedly walked toward the woods. Some tree nymphs griped at me when I disturbed them. They were always griping about some thing or another. I pushed my way past them, searching for the river where Percy played his first game of Capture the Flag.

Suddenly, I tensed. Some inner intuition of mine told me there was something- or someone in the woods. Without thinking, I grabbed my dagger, holding it in front of me warily. Things that moved about during 3am were usually pretty unfriendly.

I walked through the trees nervously, ready to spring at anything that moved. Ahead, I saw a clearing. It was the river that I had been looking for, but some part of me, perhaps my mother, warned me stay behind the trees and watch. And so I did.

As my eyes adjusted to the brighter light of the clearing, I saw a thing – a person- sitting next to the quiet river, head tipped up to look at the stars. The moon swathed his pale blond hair with silver. Luke.

What was he doing alone at 3am? He wasn't supposed to leave his cabin. Well, neither was I, but that didn't matter. He was special. Chiron didn't trust him to be alone – he had warned the older campers to try and keep an eye on him at all times. And yet, he was sitting alone at the river, staring at the stars.

I watched him for a little longer, but he didn't seem to be doing anything suspicious, like talking to a millennia-old titan lord. Or summoning weird spirits. He was just sitting.

I tried moving a little closer; maybe he was praying to Oceanus? I wouldn't be surprised he was already gathering for a second attack. Damn him…

_Crack!_

"Oh, for the love of-" I cursed silently, thinking that maybe Luke hadn't heard me. Athena was not the goddess of stealth. Wishful thinking.

He whirled to his feet, his wide blue eyes searching frantically across the line of trees I was hiding behind.

"Who's there?" he hissed. I was surprised to hear fear in his voice. And then I did something really stupid.

"Hi Luke." I stepped out from behind the oak tree. There was no use in hiding from him – better to let him see me than to take a random stab in the dark, thinking I was an enemy.

He visibly relaxed, though I noticed there was something off about him.

"Hi Annabeth."

He turned around and sat again, touching the silver grass next to him. "Sit next to me?"

I looked at him uncertainly, wondering if he was going to try to kill me. I immediately felt guilty for thinking that way. After sacrificing himself to save the whole world and being the hero talked about in the prophecies, I still found it hard to trust him at all.

"Sure." I took a deep breath to calm myself, and then walked and sat next to him, looking at the stars too. They were beautiful, exceptionally bright over Camp Half-blood. It also helped that the satyrs in the area had literally destroyed every power plant within a 50 mile radius. Without the smog, you could make out all the figures and shapes the stars made.

"One of my friends is up there, Zoe Nightshade. She was one of the Hunters of Artemis before…"

I stopped myself short of saying "before she got killed". She was killed because of Luke. Actually, most of the people that had died in the past couple of months had been because of Luke.

Since he had come back to camp, no one had discussed what had taken place. It was like they were scared they would be encouraging him, like he still had the power of Kronos inside him, waiting for the right moment to come and destroy everything.

I peered at him, wondering if he was secretly harboring an ancient evil spirit. For the first time since four years ago when he had been a camp counselor, I looked at him, truly looked at him.

His pale skin looked drawn across his face too tight and his cheekbones jutted out, giving him a meaner look. He was sickly looking, like he had been starved for too long.

I examined him with renewed surprise. A lot had changed; he definitely did not look like the healthy, tanned role model that I had idolized for so long. His blue eyes turned down at the corners, so that he looked to be in continuous pain. He sat with his arms wrapped around his legs loosely, and for a minute, I saw him as the lost and homeless 14 year old boy he had once been.

"Sometimes…sometimes I wonder why the Gods didn't let me just die." He whispered so quietly that I thought I was hearing things. Hesitantly, I scooted in closer to him, until I was right next to him, our knees touching together.

"After everything that happened, I was more dead than alive. It would have been so easy to just let me die. I thought I DID die.

Everything blacked out. You, Grover, and Percy were the last people I saw. I was okay with going to Hades- they probably would have sent me to the Fields of Punishment, but I deserve it. I deserve whatever types of painful punishments the gods can conjure up…

And when I woke up, and the first thing I saw was you. Your beautiful blond hair and your gray eyes. But your eyes, they were, they were scared."

I remembered when I had seen Luke open his eyes and stare directly at me through his glass box. I had wanted to run and go to him at the same time. He was back, but I hadn't been sure if he was really himself… but it had been Luke alright. I didn't know any else who had such vibrant blue eyes.

"I was so confused I didn't even notice when Percy stabbed me under my arm. I just felt blinding pain, and I thought that this was it. That was my eternal punishment. To see the people I love look at me in fear and hate, and to be repeatedly tormented and stabbed by the real hero, the person that I could never be as good as.

"It was only after a couple of days, when I started to get my memories back. And of why everyone in the infirmary ignored me. I was sure I had become a ghost; people were passing me, ignoring me when I asked for help, or water…

"And later, when I was let out, and Chiron brought me out to the campers and explained. You have no idea what it was like, Annabeth, to have so many eyes staring at you with so much hate. I would have vaporized on the spot, and I could see Clarisse with her hand on her sword, ready to cut me down.

"You don't know what it was like, Annabeth. Their fury was slicing and cutting me apart. They all want me dead."

I listened, my heart welling with pity for his words. And when I looked at him, he was shaking, his arms wrapped around himself, like he was trying to hold himself together.

"No one dares get close to me. They try to kill me every chance they get, Annabeth. No matter how many times I apologize, no matter how nice I am, I can't bring them back. I can't bring any of them back! They're all dead! All of them were killed by me!"

I flinched at his harsh yells, caught off guard.

"So perhaps this is why the gods sent me… to see the look of hate in the eyes of my friends is worse than anything the gods could have thought of themselves." He said bitterly.

"But the worst is to see your eyes. To see your eyes look at me with so much hate and disgust, like I'm a worthless rat that needs to be gotten rid of. To see that is, is…"

His voice cracked, and he slowly lowered his head into his arms. With a shock, I realized he was crying. I had never seen him cry. In all the years we'd known each other, the only time I had seen him close to crying was the time we met Hermes in his mom's kitchen. Now, slow tears traced their way down his face, and my heart twisted with pain.

And yet, I didn't know how to feel. Luke, my former friend, my former enemy.

Luke, who had killed so many, yet saved so many in the end,

Luke, my brother, my idol

Luke, whom I have loved and been in love,

Luke, who was in pain

Luke, who had murdered, Luke who had been murdered…

There waged a war in my mind, but more in my heart.

"Luke, I-" My mouth was dry. I could have said nothing that would have changed anything.

"He speaks to me in my dreams, Annabeth." He whispered quietly. "He speaks to me sometimes, but other times I think it is just me imagining it. I don't want to listen to him, Annabeth."

"I haven't slept soundly…since, since I've gotten out of the infirmary. When I sleep, he finds me. I can't sleep for more than 3 hours a night, an hour each."

So it explained why he was up so early. I wondered how many days he had been coming out to the woods.

It was silent then, and I felt the urge to hold Luke in my arms, to make him stop hurting. I wanted to help him, take away some of the pain that the world had forced upon his shoulders. But a part of me couldn't. I was ashamed, but a part of me screamed in triumph. This is what he deserved- this was the way it should be. He should suffer for the lost lives of innocent people, he should wither and endure agony for all the time he had stolen away from the young heroes. He deserved to be tortured.

But he was my friend, he was my brother. He was so much more than just some undead hero to me. His love for me was still there. It always had been.

And that, I had realized, hadn't stopped. Even when he had been Kronos, even when he had tried to kill me, then Percy. There was a part of him who had been there that had loved me enough to save me. To spare me.

I leaned over and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and he turned toward me, grasping desperately onto my shirt.

"Please, p-please, Annabeth, don't leave me. Please don't leave me," he gasped, tears running out of his blue eyes.

My heart clenched at the sight of his desperation. He wrapped himself around me, hugging around my stomach so fiercely I almost had trouble breathing.

"It's ok, Luke. It-it's ok." But I knew it wasn't. Nothing was going to be okay for him. Because there was no mortal, god, or in-between that did not want to see him burn in the pits of Hades and be cast into Tartarus forever. Because there was no demi-god who would stop at the chance to mutilate him and torment him till he died.

He trembled against me, clinging to me as if I were the only thing that anchored him to the world. I could feel his fear, his pain, his isolation.

And I noticed how weak he had become. His once-muscular arms were boney, and his skin was freezing. His handsome face was gaunt, and made his scar look bigger and longer, like some hideous half-smile scratched into his complexion. And the pain, the pain was all but carved into his face. He was crying; crying so hard that his blue eyes looked clouded, and the dark circles underneath them amplified the intensity of the hurt in them.

"Luke, you're really cold. Do you need me to get you to the-"

"No! No I don't need to go to the healing cabins..."

And so I held on to him, a part of me crying with him. I wanted to help him, like he had helped me when I was younger. He looked so vulnerable, so pained.

I held him closer, resting his head against my chest. Had it been another time, my heart would have been pounding, but for a different reason…

After a while, he shifted a little. "They poison me," he whispered

For a second, I didn't understand what he said. Who had poison? Who had poisoned him?

"They poison my food, they try to set traps that hurt me. The Stoll brother's have been making a lot of money from people who buy things."

I was caught off guard.

"Luke, what are you talking about? How could they poison your food, they wouldn't have the chance to. And what about the sacrificing to the Gods? The Gods would reject poisoned offerings"

"Don't ask me how. Because all I know is that somehow by the end of each night, I feel like I'm throwing up my insides. It burns…"

He had started trembling again, and I pulled him closer to me, anger and shock coursing through me. People were hurting him?

"I'll make them stop, Luke. They can't do that."

"No, Annabeth. They can. And they should. I can see their faces, Annabeth. The people I've killed. Every single one of them."

"Luke, listen to me. You've made bad choices. But you fixed it in the end. You are good."

"No! No, how can I be good? How can I take away the lives of so many? How can I pay that back?"

"Luke, you made the right choices in the end. You showed your true self-"

"No, my true self was the one who wanted all the gods dead. The one who thought that maybe once they were gone, everything would be fixed. That everything would be fine, that maybe they would realize their mistakes and learn to love us.

But my true self is dead; I died back in the throne room of Olympus 4 months ago. I'm nothing now."

And because I had no answer to his cries, I hugged him closer to me. He gasped onto my shirt, my arms, my waist, burying his head against my stomach, begging me to help him, to protect him from the unjust world.

And all I could do was rock him back and forth, and promise him that one day, one day it would all be okay again.

But I had a hard time believing myself.

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**Review please? With cherries, sprinkles, rainbows, and hugs and kisses? :)**

**-Nyx  
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